There is a great article in this month’s Toronto Life Magazine. Featured is one of our customers who saved more than $30,000 in commissions. Here is a link to the article “Free Agent - Toronto Life Article”
ByTheOwner.com welcomes all our new builders listing homes in the Kitchener Waterloo Region. Current builders include:
Freure Homes
House smart
Bayfield Homes
Granite Homes
Chris and Sons Builders lmt
Sun Point Homes
Verdone Homes
Valleyrauss Homes
All the builders receive an extensive listing for their properties including their logo, photos, listing information, as well as links to the builder`s website. Each builder also receives a separate builder`s page showing all the builder`s properties listed on the website, plus information on the company.
All the builder`s homes are listed at NewHomes.ByTheOwner.com and on ByTheOwner.com, where they are exposed to more than 200,000 visitors per week.
The spring real estate market might be starting early this year… ByTheOwner.com has seen our website traffic increase by 90% over last year and we are working hard to keep up with the demand. We have been adding servers and streamlining the website in order to handle the increased visitors. Last week we received more than 250,000 visitors to the website which is up from our average of 150,000 in 2007.
We are overjoyed when we see the results in our customer’s savings. One recent customer in Woodbridge shows exactly how much money can be saved. The couple listed their home for sale on Feb 5th, and sold it two days later. The asking price was $449,900 which amounts to $22,450 saved in commission plus an additional $1,122 saved in GST on the commission. This is a total of $23,500 saved by selling their home privately.
Did they get a good price? Let’s look at what other similar properties have sold for on their street: In 2007, there were three homes sold on the street. $415,000, $400,000 and $399,000 were the selling prices of the other homes sold. Those other homes were sold with real estate agents and mostly likely paid 5% commission. This means that the most the other owners took home was $393,000 ($415,000-commission and GST). Selling the home privately resulted in the owner keeping approximately $50,000 more than their neighbours.
Although selling in 2 days does happen (ByTheOwner.com has had more than 500 properties sold in less than 5 days), it typically takes between 30-60 days to sell your home. It requires a good home with a fair price, plus some great advertising. However, this example does show that there can be buyers ready to purchase in any neighbourhood, and by selling privately, you allow yourself the opportunity to sell quickly and save. Imagine if our clients had listed with an agent and sold in 2 days? It would have cost them $23,000 in tax free money!
Here is a link to the listing:
There was an interesting article in the Toronto Star about what happens when you are moving out of your home. The article points out that the home need to be vacant when the new owners move in. To read more, click on the link below:
Toronto Star article: House must be completely empty when sale closes
ByTheOwner.com’s website statistics for the month of January 2008:
Website visitors increased from 677,030 visitors in January 2007, to 973,095 in January 2008. This is a 44% increase in website visitors from January 2007 to 2008. We will soon be passing 1 million website visitors per month!
Pageviews increased from 6.2 million page views in January 2007, to 8.6 million pageviews in January 2008. This is 39% increase in pageviews from January 2007 to 2008.
Unique visitors and pageviews are the two most useful statistics when it comes to measuring the exposure you will receive from a For Sale By Owner website. Unique visitors is the number of individual people coming to look for properties on the site. Pageviews is the number of pages that those visitors look at.
Some websites claim to have a certain number of “hits”. This is not a valid measure of website activity, because a “hit” can be counted a number of different ways. For example, if a page has 30 images on it, and one person goes to that page, it could be counted as 30 “hits”. This would be like saying ByTheOwner.com received more than 200 million “hits”. ByTheOwner.com does not quote how many “hits” we receive because it is not a valid stat. Unique visitors and pageviews are the only real measure of website activity.
ByTheOwner.com was recently featured in the National Post and the Financial Post. The articles focuse on our owner, Nicolas Bouchard, and our growth since 1997.
The articles can be read by clicking on the link below:
National Post Article
Financial Post Article
In the past 3 months, ByTheOwner.com has been featured in:
ByTheOwner.com is pleased to announce that we are a proud supporter of the
Ambassador London Program. It is a grassroots campaign that assists to
shape the image of London as a place of global importance and influence
where all can flourish - economically, socially and culturally.
To help educate potential home buyers we have included the Ambassador Logo/Link at the top of all of our London search results pages. Once on
ambassadorlondon.ca homeowners have access to a vast network of people and
information pertaining to the City of London.
ByTheOwner.com received 215,664 visitors to our websites last week. This is up from 147,475 (46% increase!) compared to the same period in 2007 . This is also the 1st time that we have received more than 200,000 in a week.
These stats show that the buyers come rushing back after the holiday season has ended. People who know that they are going to buy a home in 2008, start looking now. In 2007, the first week of February had most amount of visitors with 172,000 weekly visitors.
Based on the growth so far in 2008, we are anticipating an average of 850,000 - 900,000 monthly visitors, up from 680,000 in 2007.
A recent Toronto Star article talks about the different financing options now available to home buyers. The article discusses:
- You can now pay off your mortgage over 30 to 40 years, instead of up to 25 years as before.
- You can now get a conventional mortgage by putting down 20 per cent of the purchase price.
- You can now qualify for a low-down-payment mortgage if you’re self-employed or work on commissions.
- You can now qualify for a mortgage if your total debt load is more than 40 per cent.
- You can now put down only 3 per cent of the purchase price.
Here is a link to the article written by Ellen Roseman:
Maclean’s Magazine recently printed an article on the Canadian Real Estate market until the title “Is it a bubble? Is it about to burst?”. To read the article, please click on the link below:
